Music

Monday, February 14, 2011

No more obituaries for a while, please. Kenneth Mars is gone, passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 75. He had a near-50 year career full of brilliant voice work on films like The Little Mermaid and TV shows like The Jetsons, and he graced films and TV series as varied as What’s Up, Doc?, Night Moves, Barney Miller, Fernwood Tonight, Citizen Ruth and Woody Allen’s Radio Days, to name but a very few.

But he will likely most fondly be remembered for two appearances in films by Mel Brooks. His first impression for Brooks came as the slightly unhinged Franz Liebkind, author of the unexpectedly popular Springtime for Hitler in The Producers (1968). (“Hitler... there was a painter! He could paint an entire apartment in one afternoon! Two coats!”) But for me, Mars’ great contribution to the cinema and to my lasting and enriched memory came when he essayed the role of Inspector Kemp, man of the law, foil to Gene Wilder's mad doctor and inciter of torch-bearing mobs, in Brooks’s peerless horror parody Young Frankenstein (1974). Mars’ inspired linguistic manglings are the one thing in that movie, no matter my mood, no matter how tired I may be of other bits in the film, guaranteed to set my laugh reflex off with no reasonable expectation of stopping. In memory of this marvelous comic actor, I give you, courtesy of The Inspector Kemp Experience, my two favorite moments in the career of Kenneth Mars:

My favorite Kenneth Mars moment is his Franz Liebkind, unable to shoot Mostel, Wilder or even himself, then sadly sighing "Oh boy, when things go wrong..." On paper, that joke could go either way. Mars played it brilliantly.